Done to Death
by ABonusLevel
Summary: Ironwood happens upon Weiss as she's walking the streets of Atlas, some hours after fleeing her family's estate. Multi-chapter. Rating set to blast through the roof in future chapters.
1. Chapter 1

The icy wind was bitter.

James took in a deep, sharp, _almost_ sobering breath as he stood outside the dark and vacant bar. He knew all too well that alcohol was not what he needed in this uncertain and trying time, but after tonight's events, the thoughts just became too intrusive. The paranoia, the fear, the uncertainty- they all finally wore too heavy on his psyche, and the constant gnawing pain that wracked his body and that he did his best to blunt and ignore came avalanching at full force.

 _Well, at least it wasn't Jacques' liquor,_ Ironwood consoled himself as he began his unsteady and stilted stroll to nowhere in particular.

The black sky was swirled with murky clouds that rained down heavy, wet snow; and he could feel his hair start to frost over. The stabbing cold on his face and steel was really doing its very best to sober him up, _and he would not allow it._

He stopped, not entirely sure where he was - _not that he cared_ \- and from his coat he pulled his well-loved flask. He took a long, indulgent drink and the sweet burn of cheap bourbon down his throat was so much more satisfying than anything Atlas' weather could ever hope to produce.

His flask still uncapped in-hand, Ironwood reluctantly refound his focus as a strange sight appeared before him - a ghostly, ethereal apparition of blue, purple, and white; the lithe, delicate silhouette illuminated in snow and streetlights, wobbling almost as much as he had been earlier. For a moment, Ironwood wondered if, maybe _, finally,_ his sane mind had fully slipped away from him.

". _..Miss Schnee?_ "

Weiss' glance shot up from the icy streets, and she froze in her tracks - her expression the definition of mortified upon the realization of just who it was standing in front of her. She clutched her suitcase with both hands, almost dropping Myrtenaster in the jumble.

Ironwood merely stared back at her in his, _yet again,_ waning drunkenness; an awkward and indulgent silence shared in the increasingly volatile weather. The hollow sound of wind billowing against the towering concrete and steel structures around them suddenly seemed so much louder and more suffocating than it should. _What a headache of a night._

"I-I can explain." She took a wobbly step back, her heels clacking softly against the cement of the sidewalk.

He stared more, mulling over the situation. Weiss was an Atlas native, well aware of the inclement weather and deathly temperatures that the night ushered in – and yet was walking the streets in what was essentially a party dress? He sighed a heavy sigh, and hung his head while he recapped and reconciled his flask. _'Combat skirts' were the worst student fad yet._

"Alright. How about we go somewhere not freezing first?"

Weiss was taken back by his words, her look of metamorphosing shock and surprise seeming almost cartoonish in the warmth of the distant fluorescents – finally, she gave him a fierce, defiant glare steeped in skepticism before the numbness and burning of the vicious cold on her body played her hand. She gave him a tiny nod.

Removing his heavy woolen coat, its exterior caked with a thin mosaicked layer of snow and ice, Ironwood closed the distance between them; he wasted no time in draping the garment around Weiss' shoulders, and it engulfed the entirety of her tiny body. She glanced up at him, blushing slightly from the strange feeling of his residual body heat surrounding her.

"…So. Where do you suggest we should go at this hour?" Her hot breath steamed and swirled in the cold, and she couldn't help but notice that the heady, spicy musk of Ironwood's familiar cologne was tainted with the stink of cigarettes and sweat.

"How about Atlas Academy." He paused, giving Weiss a strange, critical look. "Don't worry, I'm not trying to force your hand about enrolling. Like I mentioned earlier; it's vacant, now, so you... Can do whatever it is you're trying to do, for as long as you'd like."

Weiss puzzled, casting her gaze back down to the snowy streets. She didn't take ' _we'll be_ _back in session before you know it_ ' to mean _'feel free to come to loiter at the academy while nobody's around_ ', but she'd take it – for now.

Her internal focus was broken and she yelped as Ironwood suddenly slumped around her, wrapping his arms around her in a sloppy, uncoordinated embrace; his hands sliding and pressing gently against her sides, Weiss' blush deepened – and from his coat's pocket, Ironwood pulled out his scroll. Paying no mind to Weiss' reaction to his odd caress, he moved away, wasting no time in texting someone.

"It'll... Be a few minutes until the driver arrives. Hopefully! I'm not really sure where we are, and gave them latitude and longitude. With the CCT down, the local GPS has been a little dodgy." Ironwood laughed a strange, off-kilter laugh and Weiss winced.

"General, you're-" Weiss paused, gritting her teeth. She couldn't seem to meet his gaze, despite wanting to; so her eyes found themselves fixated on his chest. She watched his crimson tie billow in the winds, and the soft and shifting lights reflect off his imposing pistol, holstered in leather and pressed snug against his chest. "You're drunk, General Ironwood. Do you really... Want anyone to see you with me like this? At this hour?"

He scoffed in reply, the deeply bitter and emotional sound just as strange to Weiss' ears as his perverse laugh. "I'm long past caring."

A heavy, awkward silence hung in the air around them as they stood together – Weiss only occasionally eyeing Ironwood, who merely stared off into the distance. His hands were held behind him at parade rest, and his posture was rigid and impossibly straight; even as the vicious winds and snow and sleet assaulted his person. Weiss' mind absently wandered, and she mused that he looked as though he was guarding something.

After what felt like a horrible eternity, a discreet black car pulled up beside them.

A driver got out – a young man - and Ironwood gave him a lopsided smile, approaching him to place a hand on the youth's shoulder. " _What a good navigator you are."_

Weiss cringed, momentarily wondering if this was all an awful mistake; but still, she got into the back of the vehicle. Leaving her luggage for the driver, she clutched Ironwood's coat tightly around her and savored its supplemented warmth in the shelter of the car. She continued to eye Ironwood as he handed the driver several Lien notes; their denominations bigger and more generous than anything she'd ever tipped.

"We'd like our privacy, please." Ironwood joined Weiss, sloppily throwing too much of his weight into the mundane motion of sitting to her left. The fine leather seats of the vehicle were heated, and Ironwood shifted uncomfortably. "We have boring military jargon to discuss; boring, but sensitive. Thank you." With his polite and increasingly slurred words, the driver nodded, and a privacy screen went up between them.

"So, _what is this."_ The warmth - and lack of coordination - in Ironwood's voice was gone. He removed his left glove, and ran his fingers through his hair; upsetting his side part and slicking it back, he scraped off some of the quickly melting snow. He stared at the water dripping down his hand; his expression dazed and vacant, he was clearly not sure what to do with it.

"I'm... Going to Mistral." Weiss stated, as she turned to face Ironwood, and finally meet his gaze. His soaked silken shirt, the fine and thin black fabric drenched with melted sleet and snow, was clinging tightly to his body and making him look monstrous. Each hard and jagged angle from his prosthetics made to look all the more unnatural with the shifting shadows and contrasts of the passing streetlights, Weiss swallowed out of nervous reflex, finding her mouth uncomfortably dry.

"I see." James exhaled through his nose, shutting his eyes. He didn't want to think about Mistral right now, and he let the disgusting gravity of her words fall deep and lost into his drunken haze. "What was your plan, exactly? You weren't planning on walking there, were you?"

Weiss' eyes narrowed at his snide, mocking comments. " _No_ , of course not. I had… A plan. _A plan that didn't involve you_ , which is why I locked-" Weiss stopped, covering her mouth before giving him a nervous glance. Ironwood quirked a brow, before narrowing his eyes to mirror hers.

"So it was you who locked the door?" Ironwood watched Weiss look down to her hands, grabbing and bunching the thick, coarse fabric of his coat as she began nervously kneading it between her fingers. _Her fire was put out_ , he noted before he continued, hesitant; his words took more focus than he wanted to muster. "I'm having... _Something of a rough time right now_ , I suppose you could say. Your actions weren't appreciated, Weiss."

He _deeply_ lamented that his flask was now in a pocket that was tightly clutched against Weiss' chest.

"I know. And I'm sorry. But I just-"

" _But_ _you just didn't want to risk it?_ Risk me, seeing you? Reacting? Immediately turning around, and telling Jacques?" Ironwood scoffed again, his voice climbing in volume. "I would have helped you, you know. Even if for no other reason than it would have given me something more productive to do tonight. Something more focused and... _Real. Immediate. Tangible_."

Weiss began pulling the fabric taut between her hands. For as long as she had known General Ironwood - _and it was a long time, that she had known General Ironwood_ \- she had never seen him so... Emotional; _so unhinged_. Since the fall of Beacon, _even while sober_ , every single one of his words was dripping in cynicism and frustration. It frightened her.

 _It frightened her_ ; frightened her more than she could explain, or understand, and it made her feel so terribly _raw_.

"…Why didn't you arrest me at the party?"

Ironwood looked up at the roof of the car, raising his eyebrows. He scoffed again; but it was soft, and full of a disgusting pity. _Helping._

The overwhelming urge to reclaim his flask from Weiss' desperate clutches had finally won over the final vestiges of his sane restraint; and so he turned to her, and reached out - _but thankfully,_ _they arrived at the academy._

"There's a flask in the left breast pocket of my coat." Ironwood licked his lips, finding his mouth unbearably parched. "Please give it to me."

Weiss gave him stern pause, staring him down. " _No."_

Her expression steely, plain, and unyielding, she got out of the car; and Ironwood went back to staring at the roof.

Weiss walked on ahead _,_ her nose turned to the sky, _leaving him to collect her luggage_. She uncannily seemed to know exactly where she was going in the large complex, and Ironwood took his time in exiting the car; he still looked on even as the driver left Weiss' belongings beside him and departed, absently lamenting that the tails of his coat were being dragged along the salted concrete of the campus' courtyard as Weiss walked.

 _Another good, fine coat. Gone. Ruined._

Finally, James began to move; to catch up to her - but his right leg faltered, the servos in his thigh, knee, and ankle going limp and unresponsive - and he stumbled, his prosthetics completely collapsing under his weight. He fell to land hard on his right side, his shoulder gouging deep into the ground; dropping Weiss' suitcase, Myrtenaster rolled clunkily away from him.

 _It was so tempting to - maybe, finally - just stay down,_ Ironwood romanticized to himself, as he felt the billows of snow and sleet worm their way beneath his shirt; and he shuddered as the ice particles rolled and traveled down along the remaining flesh of his back.

Now it was another good, fine shirt that was gone - _ruined_ \- he mourned, but focusing, he regained control – and Ironwood pushed himself off the ground, and stood himself upright.

Weiss would just have to wait for him to collect her things, and unlock whatever door it was that she thought she was going to go through.


	2. Chapter 2

Atlas Academy, Ironwood knew, seemed _so_ _terribly underwhelming_ at first glance.

The visible campus was low, and relatively flat, and not spread out over _too_ vast an area- The twin-spiked steeple that housed his quarters and office undeniably dwarfed and overshadowed by the surrounding city's ice-covered skyscrapers and perpetually airborne distribution ports. Dust lanterns and furnaces dotted the grounds - some suspended, some tethered, some running deep within the depths of the earth – doing their _very best_ to thaw the deathly ice around them and provide some semblance of a buffer to Atlas' merciless arctic chill.

Truly, at a glance, the pride and joy that was his school was a joke; a joke compared the awesome network of interconnected bridges and monumental pyramids that was Shade, or the insurmountably warm and eternally immovable mountain that was Haven.

 _An absolute joke,_ Ironwood thought, as he walked; his steel-reinforced steps echoing hollow in the sterile corridors. _A joke_ c _ompared to the towering, shining spire that was once Beacon._

He could see Weiss, now, as he neared the end of the dark hall; his coat still draped around her shoulders, and trailing on the ground - the moisture it dragged in still evident and glistening on the floor. And Ironwood cocked his head to the side and let out a small, slurred chuckle. Even from this distance as he approached her from behind, he could tell that she was pouting in frustration. " _Inconvenient_ , isn't it? Wandering around on your own at night, in an unfamiliar place? _Finding locked doors?_ "

Weiss turned around at the sound of his voice, answering his idle, drunken snide with a sigh and a heavily conflicted look. "Right. I'm sorry, okay? I'm _sorry."_ Still clutching tight to his coat, she turned again to face the androids that barred her entry. They stood, steadfast and unfeeling, with their rifles pointed and ready. "Obviously, they're not letting me through; and so your grandiose, ironic revenge has been successfully exacted. And I thought they were going to shoot at me, at first."

Ironwood gave her a bemused chuff. With no choice in the matter, Ironwood continued his approach - and he walked over a large, grated vent that segmented the tiles at the end of the hall. The billowing heat causing the thick, drenched strands of Ironwood's hair to momentarily waft, and causing his clothes to passingly feel so slightly less soaked and frozen, he shuddered in revulsion. The spike in heat against his cold, frosted metal making his insides ache and his metal thrum and twinge, he fleetingly recalled why he never took this particular route to the elevators.

Weiss felt pangs of guilt, now, as she watched his backlit silhouette walk; and it was again made nauseatingly clear that the sluggish, labored movements did not belonging to the James Ironwood that she knew. She felt such regret, now, seeing him like this—Such regret for giving him sass, and for storming off in revolted frustration, leaving him in the cold to carry her belongings… _But what else was she supposed to have done, in that situation? With him looming over her, the smell of bourbon strong on his breath? Looking so painfully needful, and so pitifully desperate..?_

His body's closeness broke her from her thoughts, and demanded her return to the present.

"For starters, Weiss – no, they weren't going to shoot you. You're just… Not a registered student." Weiss stepped aside for Ironwood as he passed her, and she continued to watch him walk, and move. Myrtenaster's blade bobbed in his loose grip in rhythm with his stilted stride, and he went the short distance beyond into the elevator lobby; the duo of AK-200 soldiers lowering their rifles in response to his approach, and truly standing down.

"They don't recognize your face. If you had tried using your Glyphs on them, though – yes, _then_ they'd have shot you." Ironwood laughed disproportionately hard to his own disjointed musings, nearing the rightmost elevator. "It's only two more to add to the scrap pile, though, right?" His laughs ended in a fit of coughing- and he sloppily propped his left arm against the back wall to steady himself, beside the elevator's control panel.

Weiss rushed to him in alarm; and in the dim emergency lights of the lobby, she could see metal glinting where it shouldn't – and where it _wasn't_ throughout their uncomfortable car ride, mere moments ago. The lights shone along Myrtenaster's slender and now upright blade- and against Ironwood's right shoulder, and his limp, dangling right forearm. "General, are you alright? What- _What happened?_ Your shirt is torn, and there's dirt on your pants? Wha-"

"I fell." Ironwood took a deep breath, finally steady-

" _What?"_ Weiss interjected, her exclamation resounding in the dark emptiness around them. " _When?_ Now? I—"

He jumbled Weiss' possessions; her suitcase still held firmly in his gloved artificial hand despite its limp disposition, and he moved to pin the blade of Myrtenaster under his right arm. Reaching into his rear pocket, he again materialized his scroll; pressing it to the elevator's controls, the blunt sounds of heavy locks disengaging echoed with Weiss' concerned voice down the still, vacant halls.

He leaned over, gently prodding her with Myrtenaster's hilt; an invitation to finally unburden him and reclaim her possessions.

And without hesitation, Weiss did.

"What do you mean ' _you fell'_...?" Weiss' voice was quiet, now; a chaotic, multifaceted, haphazard panic setting in – and her thoughts were poisoned with worst-case scenarios. _What if…_

"It's nothing. My body isn't listening to me tonight. I'm… tired. I've had too much to drink. It's normal." Ironwood murmured, raising his hand to trace absent, sloppy lines over the elevator's control panel with his half-outstretched index finger. He paused, his hand hanging limp and motionless as he fought back his own idle, chaotic intrusions – _and a ray sobriety shined through; his voice again strong, clear, and confident._ "Please don't concern yourself with it, Miss Schnee. We have considerably more important matters to discuss in my office, don't we?"

Weiss gave him a small nod, devoid of any and all confidence.

 _…But with time, and with patience…. One would come to realize the true splendor that was Atlas Academy; its sprawling underground network._ Repurposed from stripped Dust mines, the Academy ran _deep_ – and it was warm beneath Remnant's crust. It was so cradling, so nurturing, so protected - so tenderly sheltered from the harsh and unforgiving world around them.

 _…It was…_

 _…So warm…_

 _What if he just… Took Weiss to the vault..? What if…_

James sighed, forgoing any strange codes and complex entries on the elevator's panel- and merely selected the public preset for the highest floor. The elevator door opened with little hesitation and Ironwood motioned to Weiss, giving her an outstretched hand and a small bow.

And once again, the stale air hung heavy and awkward between them.

And once again, Ironwood took that rigid, mocking, familiar pose- But it was _wrong_ , now. He wasn't _guarding_ anything. He was standing with his arms positioned _too_ neatly behind his back, so that they looked tense- And his chest was puffed out so… _derisively_. It was a forced pose, too exaggerated, Weiss knew- a shallow, feigned mockery of his typically innate confidence and pride.

 _She couldn't take it._

"I… I regret this, General Ironwood. I regret coming with you. The cold wasn't _that_ bad; I should have ran. I _could_ have ran. But, no. Instead of being well on my way to Mistral, I'm here, with you, in this elevator. Going to your office at two in the morning, alone, during a snowstorm, with nobody around for miles and miles!" She scoffed, the absolute lunacy of her situation seeming to reach truly critical levels when succinctly vocalized.

Ironwood gave her no reply, but the unsettling rigidity of his posture lessened.

 _The elevator was half way, now…_ The whirring white noise of the machinery carrying it upwards was quiet, and comforting.

"Are you hearing how this sounds!? You're- _I'm-_ You're not just drunk. I _know_ drunk. I don't- I don't know who you are right now. The man I knew isn't… _This._ You're making me so… Uncomfortable." Weiss paused, tears in her eyes; she was _overwhelmed_ , now- She was overwhelmed with worry for him, and it was getting to be too much. "…You've _never_ made me uncomfortable."

"…Are your clothes still wet?" Ironwood turned to face her; detached and absent. "Underneath my coat, I mean?"

" _What?!"_ Weiss screamed in response, her maelstrom of churning, awful feelings finally giving way to furious anger- and it boiled over, hot and scalding. She was crying, now. "What's _wrong_ with you?! What does that have to do with _anything-"_

Ironwood slammed his left hand flat against the panel of the elevator, and Weiss jumped back in shock at his sudden, violent outburst. The elevator stopped moving. As his hand slid lax down the panel, he leaned forward; his forehead taking his hand's place.

"What do you expect to find in Mistral, Weiss?!" Ironwood cried out, desperate and exasperated- before letting out a sigh and calming himself. "I _apologize_ for my behavior; you're correct, it is… Highly inappropriate. And I've burdened you; burdened you further than I had any right to. But tell me; what other parts to this journey to Mistral are you confident about handling better than you're handling this?"

Weiss had no concise retort, and merely bored into him with her eyes; vacant tears running down her face. "I just…. I need to be with Winter."

"…That's a very good a reason." Ironwood couldn't seem to regain his composure, even as the elevator doors opened.

There were no walls, in this pitch-black room that they revealed; merely towering windows that cast forth a cold, gentle, diffused light. The snow fell so violently beyond their panes, whiting out the blinks and glows and shifting spotlights of the surrounding city.

She could make out the silhouettes of clean-cut, sterile furnishings- A sofa, and a coffee table, and the glint of glasses and liquor bottles neatly arranged. The workings of a small kitchen set farther in, partially obscured by the outlines of strong, steel pillars that dotted the lofty room.

This wasn't his _office,_ Weiss knew. And she felt her heart sink to the pit of her stomach.

"Can I offer you anything to drink, Weiss? Because I desperately need one."


End file.
